How to Safely Use Microsoft Windows XP FOREVER!

how to safely use Microsoft Windows XP forever no operating system is perfect even with Windows 10 there's always the possibility of a security or data breach our goal here with Windows XP is to minimize the risk and mitigate potential damage to get started we need to talk about Windows updates we only want to use updates that were officially released by Microsoft while The Unofficial Service Pack 4 and registry hack to pull updates from the the POS ready version of XP sound great there's no evidence that those updates make the operating system more secure there is also the risk with unofficial service packs that they may contain malicious code intentionally included or not the safest approach is to only use updates officially released by Microsoft our test system here now has Service Pack 3 installed at the time of this recording you can still repair the automatic update feature in Windows XP and receive updates directly from Microsoft in the future should this option no longer be available there is an alternative from a third party called Legacy update which is a community-run resource that restores access to the Windows update services on early versions of Windows next we need antivirus software the safest approach to using an Antiquated operating system is running antivirus software so we will be using a vast the the software vendor was found to be collecting and selling user data to a third party an opt out option was always available in the settings and the privacy policy stated that data was being collected and what it was used for this practice isn't any different than what Facebook Google or Microsoft does free products and services almost always come at the cost of privacy Avast has since changed to an opin for data collection and revised their privacy policy Avast is still a valid choice for antivirus software however I have come to favor Panda Dome as it is an overall more pleasant user experience there is a school of thought that antivirus software isn't that important if you are sensible and careful enough about what you do online only visiting legitimate websites official software stores and policing the link you click on with a degree of scrutiny you probably won't encounter any malware or viruses as our goal is to use Windows XP in the safest way possible we want to use antivirus software then we need a web browser bottom line don't use Internet Explorer the latest version of Internet Explorer available for Windows XP is version 8 which has not been updated in many years in a previous video we identified a number of browsers owers that work better than Internet Explorer and put the system at far less risk the browser identified as best is myal however it's not the only viable alternative to Internet Explorer support for Internet Explorer 8 ended on January 16th 2018 this means that any new vulnerabilities identified for the browser have not been patched and will never be by Microsoft unfortunately my pal is no longer actively being developed for Windows Window XP which means that no web browser is actively being developed for Windows XP there are still several viable browser options to choose from they just won't be receiving updates those are my palal and New Moon web browsers have their own layer of security they can block access to malicious websites and downloads that may harm your computer there are a few things we can do to further improve that security using a program called Spybot Search and destroy we can immunize the browser this process really just adds entries to the host file but it has a cool name the host file Maps host names to IP addresses this can be used to block access to websites we can actually manually update the host file there are many predefined lists that you can just copy and paste into the host file another approach we can take is using an ad blocker like ad block plus like the host file there are filter lists available that you can use to block ads elements of pages social media tracking Etc so where do we go from here to improve security the next area we want to explore is with user accounts a study from 2013 found that 92% of all critical vulnerabilities can be exploited successfully only if the user is logged into to an account with administrative privileges so what we want to do is create a new user account a power user so we can still install software but not an administrator that has access to all of the system internals that can be exploited so we are all set with our new user account now to turn up data execution prevention protection data execution prevention protection or D is designed to prevent the execution of malicious code on parts of the computer's memory that are intended to hold data rather than program code malicious code may be placed in these parts of memory during a buffer overflow attack and an attempt May subsequently be made to execute it from this location to get the maximum protection from D ensure that it is turned on for all applications if a particular application becomes unstable with the turned on on you can selectively disable it for that application there is another tool to consider using it's called the enhanced mitigation experience toolkit from Microsoft it's a utility that helps prevent vulnerabilities in software from being successfully exploited the simple explanation given by Microsoft for how it works is it uses mitigation Technologies they may as well have said it uses digital Wizardry that sounds much cooler in my opinion as we are trying to be as secure as possible putting another layer between an attack and the software that's being exploited seems like a good idea to me avoid running Java and Flash many high trffic websites use or used to use elements made with Java or Flash making it a huge Target in terms of cyber security many Facebook games for example ran on flash these Technologies are being moved away from and there is less and less need for Java and Flash so you won't be missing out on much not using these two programs on your Windows XP PC the safest path is to disable flash if the browser you are using still supports it next up we want to disconnect from the network if you are using your Windows XP system to perform tasks that do not require a connection to the internet it is best to disconnect from the network if there was some some potential security issue on the same network as your system or your system has been compromised it may pose a threat to other computers on the network if you disconnect from the network it minimizes that risk then we can turn off auto run when auto run is enabled and removable media such as a USB drive is attached to the system it may attempt to do some function specified by the setting this can cause malicious code to execute on the system without user intervention turning this feature off reduces the risk when using any kind of removable media then we want to consider the productivity software we're using like operating systems productivity Suites are not supported indefinitely by their developers while office XP in Office 2003 will still run on Windows XP they may not be the best choice as they have not received any kind of security patches in many years there are better alternatives to this and open- Source options that pose less of a security risk keep a restore point in the event the computer does get some kind of virus malware Etc system restore May save you from having to do a full format and Recovery it's a three-step process after the virus infects the system or the malicious code executes on your computer step one is to disconnect from the network step two is to disable the antivirus software and step three oh wait wait so after I get the virus you want want me to disable the antivirus software you know how silly that sounds yes as odd as that may sound if the virus or malware gets past the antivirus software chances are it has done all it's going to be able to do the reason to disable the antivirus software is it can cause system restore to fail that is step three attempt a system restore the next thing to consider is saving some tasks for systems that are currently supported by their developers online banking for example may not be the best application for an XP system if possible save those tasks for an Android smartphone or Windows 10 system anything that's currently supported by its developer to continuously improve security we can move on to customizing the installation disc should we need to reinstall Windows XP in the future we want to avoid spending time doing things like updating the system locating drivers entering the product key Etc using a tool called enlight we can modify the Windows XP installation dis to address all of these points Windows updates can be found on the Microsoft update catalog or downloaded using a tool called the windows patch loader drivers can be a little harder to find the ideal source is the manufacturer's website if it's still Al or if there is a functional Wayback machine snap shot available alternatively retro systems Revival has a massive Archive of device drivers that may contain compatible drivers for your Hardware the last component is deciding what you want to customize on your installation dis there are some features that can be safely removed or you can suppress some of the prompts during installation and include your product key interesting ly you can ask Google bard to write an answer file for you and it [Music] does Windows XP is the first version of Windows to require product activation at the time of this recording it is still possible to use the activate by phone option in the United States however in the future that might not be the case let's talk about thirdparty software in most cases visiting a software vendor's public website to download something will give you the current version of their software which will likely not be compatible with Windows XP some software vendors have an archive available of older versions but that is only useful if you know the latest version that's compatible with Windows XP for that we can look to a forum post over on msfn while the thread for Windows XP is not or organized or easily used the thread for Windows Vista is and thankfully roughly 95% of the latest versions available for Windows Vista are also the latest versions available for Windows XP using these strategies hopefully we can use Windows XP forever

Channel: Adventures in Nostalgia

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Id: t_AcTCW8280

Length: 12min 21sec (741 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2024